As much as scouts project Kohl Stewart of St. Pius X High in Houston to be a future No. 1 starter for a major league team, fans may never get to see the highly promising right-hander in "The Show," given the fragility of hotshot high school pitchers and the futility of predicting which prospects actually will make it. Heck, with the letter of intent he’s signed to play quarterback at Texas A&M, Stewart might not even play professional baseball.

Still. Chad MacDonald’s got to see him.

Which explains why MacDonald -- the Padres vice-president/assistant general manager of player personnel – was on the road between Waco and Dallas on Monday afternoon. His is just about the last word on the June draft for the Padres, and while it’s highly unlikely that Stewart will be available when San Diego exercises the No. 13 overall pick, you just never know.

“He’s the best high school arm in the country, so I don’t know if he’s going to be available,” said MacDonald after watching Stewart win a state-playoff game. “But he’s electric.”

This week, teams are wrapping up their scouting of high school players, then will disperse their talent-evaluators to the college conference tournaments across the country. The week after that, everyone will assemble in San Diego for final draft preparations.

MacDonald’s overseeing his second Padres draft, the first of which is proving productive, albeit only a couple months into the 2013 season. The three high school pitchers chosen early in last year’s draft – left-hander Max Fried (seventh overall) and right-handers Zach Eflin (33rd) and Walker Weickel (55th) are on path in Single-A Fort Wayne. Travis Jankowski, taken 44th, is already with High-A Lake Elsinore and scoring plus marks as a center fielder.

“It’s not always just a matter of taking your best player on your board at that time,” said MacDonald. “You want to take the best player, but you also have to spend your money wisely, and I think we balanced it last year very well.”

That things are turning out so well so far is especially gratifying to MacDonald because high school pitchers, generally speaking are what he calls the “riskiest demographic.” The Padres went for three right off the bat, basically.

“They’ve all had some ups, they’ve all had some downs, but they’re all progressing,” said MacDonald of the aforementioned trio. “I think we’re going to look up real quickly and see that they’re legitimate pitching prospects that all have chances to be more than just big leaguers, but big leaguers who can impact a major league rotation.”

Because the Padres went so heavy on pitching last year and feel fairly well-stocked with developing arms in the low minors, there’s probably more of a need for position players, particularly middle infielders.

“All things being equal, we would like to take a bat,” said MacDonald. “We would love to have taken a bat last year at seven, because there were so few bats, but Fried was a high-ceiling guy.

“If we take a pitcher, it’ll be a guy we feel has the chance to be a real impact starter, not a bottom-of-the-rotation guy or a bullpen guy. He’s going to be one of the three or four guys who, when we get into the postseason, he’ll be in the playoff rotation.”

In the estimation of most draftniks, the player taken first overall on June 6 by the Houston Astros will be a right-handed college pitcher, either Mark Appel of Stanford or Jonathan Gray of Oklahoma.

To see the collegian considered the best position player on a regular basis, MacDonald has merely to jump in his car for a short ride to USD, where third baseman Kris Bryant has been mashing baseballs the same way he did with the U.S. national team.

“He’s arguably the best power bat in the draft,” said MacDonald. “I’m not sure he’ll make it to 13. (Chuckling.) I don’t think he’d make it to 14.”